New Monthly Enterprises Survey №49, May 2026 (abridged)

• Staff shortages have reached a historic high: 69% of respondents consider this the #1 obstacle to doing business during the war.
• Resource costs and security risks remain among the main challenges.
• The energy situation is improving: power supply interruptions are no longer among the most acute problems, with their relevance at 20%.
• Assessments of the government’s economic policy remain restrained: there are still four times as many pessimists as optimists.

“Labor shortage” leads among the main obstacles to doing business in wartime, and in May, this problem intensified even further. It already worried a record 69% of businesses — the highest figure since the beginning of the monthly surveys.

This is evidenced by the results of the 49th monthly survey conducted by the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting (IER) among 469 industrial enterprises.